The slaughtering of red meat slaughter animals and the subsequent cutting up of the carcasses takes place in slaughterhouses and/or meat processing plants. Even in relatively modern slaughterhouses and red meat processing plants, many of the processes are carried out partly or entirely by hand. This is at least partly due to the variation in shapes, sizes and weights of the carcasses and carcass parts to be processed and to the harsh environmental conditions that are present in the processing areas of slaughterhouses and red meat processing plants. This manual or semi-automated processing results in harsh laboring conditions for the workers and high labor costs.
The above mentioned problem has partly been solved may US2012/0315834 disclosing a system and method for processing slaughtered animals and/or parts thereof, in particularly slaughtered pigs where e.g. an overhang transport system is used for conveying individual pig leg parts while various processing steps are being performed. One of these processing steps is illustrated in FIG. 1 showing a manually removal of a shoulder blade from a pig carcass carried by a carrier 108 that is attached to an overhang transport system (not shown) that moves the carrier and thus the carcass part in a conveying direction T. An operator 110 uses a shoulder blade detachment tool 102. A carrier brings the carcass part 105 to be processed to the shoulder blade detachment processing station, where support guides 109 make sure that the carcass part is presented to the operator 110 in an appropriate orientation.
At the start of the processing process the operator arranges the pulling plate 104 behind the shoulder blade whereby pulling a trigger of the tool the pulling plate 104 moves towards the operator and pulls the shoulder blade at least partly loose from the carcass part while the carcass part is held in a fixed position.
It should be noted that the shoulder blade detachment tool 102 shown here may just as well be implemented while the carcass is resting on a table (not shown).
The manual or semi manual process is however physically difficult for the operator and also results in a high labour costs.
There is thus a need for an apparatus that is capable of automatically removing the shoulder blade from the carcass in a simple way.